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Proposal: DevOps

The description of the DevOps StackExchange site is currently this:

Proposed Q&A site for software Engineers working on automated testing, continuous delivery, service integration and monitoring, and building SDLC infrastructure.

I think this might be too narrow. DevOps is about a lot more than just automation. There are cultural, process, and business aspects to DevOps that should be in-scope for this site.

Should the description be expanded to cover these aspects? Would questions on these sub-topics be too opinion-based to be useful?

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  • Would is your current opinion about this? Shall we update the description?
    – 030
    Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 17:01

2 Answers 2

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Without the culture and process questions, this site should not even be called DevOps. You can pretty much rename it SRE the way you have defined it. There already is site called SoftwareEngineering.StackExchange.com that is pretty much what the narrow definition says.

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    I disagree as the whole infrastructure as code paradigm par of this proposal would be off topic for SE, SO and SU.
    – Tensibai
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 10:25
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In my humble opinion, no it shouldn't.

Problem with question about culture, general process or business aspects are nearly impossible to keep focused enough to get factual answers.
Everyone will have his/her point of view and soon answers will just address another answer assertion, turning into a debate forum.

StackExchange sites are not for this, they aim to be a collection of Q/A with "definitive" answers backed up by some evidences.

While I don't think the description of the site should be extended as it would imply allowing broad questions, I think some questions focused on specific points in those areas would be welcome.

For example "Why does planning poker use Fibonacci sequence ?" sounds a reasonably scoped question about a specific point on a process which can be answered with some references about literature and with a reasonable amount of opinion.

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  • I agree regarding culture and business, but isn't process an integral part of "building SDLC infrastructure"?
    – GMNoob
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 16:12
  • @GMNoob Hence why I feel adding process in the description is bad idea, it would be redundant and begging for too broad question like "How do I convince manager about devops ?". That doesn't mean all the questions about processes would be off topic, but begging in description for off topic questions is counter productive IMHO.
    – Tensibai
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 16:16
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    I strictly disagree with you on this. There is a large body of science around culture and process related questions and just because you have not studied this, does not mean it is not there or that it is not factual.
    – Jiri Klouda
    Commented Mar 2, 2017 at 5:19
  • @JiriKlouda You didn't understand my point, I just say "culture" alone is a magnet for too broad questions. Now the site is in Beta, the correct place to raise the concern would be meta.devops btw.
    – Tensibai
    Commented Mar 2, 2017 at 8:31
  • @JiriKlouda Have a look at SO Meta (seems you never interacted there before) to understand what I mean, there's a real background of what works and what doesn't fit for a Q/A site
    – Tensibai
    Commented Mar 2, 2017 at 8:33
  • I am with @JiriKlouda on this one. Strongly disagree that your assumption is correct, "opinion" answers can be removed - but there are a different kind of answer to these basic questions. There a ton of definitive knowledge that spans thousands of books and more than a hundred years of human endeavor. That knowledge has been battle tested in the field in many other industries, and also in IT. Just because you have not read the books, and are not aware of this knowledge, does not mean the every answer to such questions is going to be "opinion".
    – Evgeny Zislis
    Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 7:48
  • @evgeny we are back on field of your judgement, as said on one of your post I will write a Meta tomorrow to better explain my concerns , on phone only this weekend and it's not great to write a post with references
    – Tensibai
    Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 8:01

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